Facebook Case Study

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a whiz kid born to a psychiatrist and a dentist. Signs of entrepreneurial behaviour started to show at the young age of eleven. Mark majored in computer science and psychology at Harvard. Writing a student program called CourseMatch to aided students in strategically selecting their courses. He the n created Facematch which gave students the ability to rate others on looks and then poll the results online. Due to its success, the college network was overwhelmed and was forced Facematch to shut down. His next endeavour was his greatest success. Thefacebook was created by his roommate Dustin Moskovitz, investor, Peter Thiel, and Sean Parker of Napster fame. What started off as a college student application, soon turned into a flagship for social networking not only students, but many users and companies. Strategic Profile and Case Analysis Purpose

Facebook has been very successful since its inception. Even after going public in 2012 with initial scepticism by investors the company has beat the odds. Through successful acquisitions, Facebook has been able to not only maintain but enhance its service offerings to its users and advertisers. Facebook utilized several acquisitions to not only improve on or offer new services like its partnership with Zynga; but was also able to pilfer top talent from companies to implement in internal Facebook projects. This allowed Facebook to bypass new product development and increase diversification in its service offerings. Acquiring companies like Instagram also helped keep competition down. By acquiring companies that offered services superior to Facebook in their early stages, Facebook was able to keep competition to a minimum.